User blog:YourPrivateNightmare/Sejuani, the story, the problem, and the possible solution
Introduction It's me again, with a sort-of-rant about one of my (past) favorite champions. what?...do you seriously expect me to introduce her after it's already done in the title? Anyways, was my first real favourite champion pre-rework, and I used to plasy her on a regular basis (pretty much Sejuani only, jungle or afk). And even tho I can't say that I was particularly good at her (as in, jungle rout planning, doing something othr than just QWER without an actual thought process) she was my favorite for a number of reasons. But let's not about the old times for they will never be back *sob* ....instead let's talk about the old times!....wait what? So get yourself a drink and turn on some music, because this is gonna be a huge wall of text. The Problem Sejuani is, by no means at all, a weak champion. Her kit is, for a tank, insanely loaded in terms of cc AND damage. Her Ap scaling are quite awesome too, which, at times, can make her somewhat of a high damage AoE burst mage (works mid and jungle). Overall her kit displays what she#S supposed to be: A straight forward fightertank who engages fights and wins them. Now here's the problem: Sejuani was designed to be a jungler. A tanky jungler with decent clears and a lot of ganking potential. Old Sejuani fulfilled that role easily. While her clearspeed was kind of a lackluster (especially when the jungle got harder and harder), ehr gnaks remained strong, due to permaslow adn the msot insane cc nuke one can imagine. Basically it was like this: Sejuani ganks at lvl 4 and if you pushed beyond halfway through the lane, you woN#t get away fomr passive + redbuff + permafrost. Did I mention her extremely long-ranged Q dash? When she finally gets ult shit gets even ore serious. Her old ult was so powerful, even if you missed it, the explosion radius would stun for a somewhat reduced duration (also it was the most awesome thing ever to see a fully stacked frozen in an equally large block of ice). However, old Sejuani had one big problem...being the only tank without and armor/Mr steroid, a heal, a temporary health buff, or a shield. The only one. too, but noone considers him a tank, really. This meant that Sejuani, even tho she was a good tank, and a valuable teammember, would always be outclassed by every single otehr tank, in terms of trying to soak up damage. This was only partially an issue for me as I would play suicide Sejuani, jsut charging in headfirst while fully knowing that I won't last that long, but stil causing a good amount of damage and opening up an opportunity for my teammates to sweep. IN the end, however, I had to admit that Sejuani was a lackluster in terms of tanking (and clearspeed) and got frustrated, really longing for buffs. Then the "tweaks to ehr kit" got announced and I got super excited...then SHe appeared in this badass-version in Lissandra'S teaser and the excitement intesified. Then she got released and everything went down the shithole... First of all, I didn't like her new splash...I mean, her design was cool and all, but the splash...dude to the shading and weird color choices she looks nothing like her ingame model. Her face looks too masculine (especially ocnsidering how pretty it looks on the ingame model) the nice color pattern on her model are invisible because verything is just blue-ish...and Bristle wasn't Bristle anymore. It's supposed to be a boar and some weird Wolf-mammoth hybrid, goddammit! Her kit on the other hand seemed promising at first. Even tho her (sort of extremely broken) permaslow passive got removed, she received a good boost to her lategame, which always had been an issue for me, as well as a passive that SHOULD have solved all her early jungle problems. The Actual Problem (I'm sorry, I'm thinking this post up as I'm writing, I barely have a concept) Sejuani's new passive basically got 'd...no in the sense for being made amazingly awesome and with a seductive moustache...but rather as in..."this shit's kinda broken, we need a filler". Don't try to deny it, Draven'S new passive is barely useful. Sure it helps you snowball, blablablabla...yes, it helps you snowball for aorund 200 more gold...If you snowball with Draven you snowball hard already...and if oyu don't the apssive is useless. It doens't amplify his snowballing, it's sjut there and looks good. Also it only works if you actually score the kill, and we all know that in lane, it's not always you who gets the kills. But enough about Draven (EVEN THO THERE CAN NEVER BE ENOUGH DAAAAVEN). Back to Sejuani: Her passive is, by all means, a lazy joke. It's the weakest (THE WEAKEST) armor steroid there is (even ult has a better passive scaling...seriously, as soon as he's 6 he will always have more armor earlier than Sejuani). While it does reduce early jungle creep damage...BARELY...it has almost no impact late game...25 bonus armor on a tank, that's a sad joke, even gets more with his passive. So it barely does it's job as a protective early steroid (the average does not care about that + 10 armor...my god, that's less than a ) So, the armor is pretty much a decoy. There'S also the slow redcution...which is pretty much redundant, since you're one of the stickiest tanks already and nobody#s gonna waste slows on you...and even if they do it#S most likely before you get in range to attack them, and, OH BOY, isn't it convenient how the apssive only activates upon you dealing actual damage to something...in other words, using your ult to get in range to hit them with your flail, in which case you've already LOCKED THEM DOWN and are going to proceed to cc the shit outta them. The slow reduction is as useful as ...I can't even think of anything so out of place to compare it to this.. Sejuani's remaining kit Before we come to my "solution" let'S quickly rundown the rest of her abilities. : received the msot significant change back then, as it turned from a long ranged, rather slow AoE dash used for applying to multiple targets, to a shorter ranged initiate and ganking tool, as it provided additional knock-up. This buff was amazing, since the old Q had always been a lackluster since it really did nothingother than closing gaps and applying Frost. the additional %HP damage didn't hurt either and made her lategame damage a lot more threatening. In other words, Riot tried to overload this ability with both utility and damage in order to compensate for the nerfs to the rest of her kit. : This ability got VIOLATED so hard, if it was a person, you'd find it's remains scattered in a one-mile radius. Previously it was an instantly activated damaging aur around you (makes sense on a tank. that also did more damage if the target was Frosted. In other words, Q through a camp to apply frost and activate W. Then continue to attack the main mob to keep the Frost up. Simple. Effective. With the removal of Forst, the damage on this ability got significantly lowered (and somewhat moved to Q). Thus, and this is the stupid part, her significance as a tank was shrunk down. Previously she was ore about the DPS from her W....which didn't really exist anymore (actually it did, with a 16% bonus health scaling, which was then GUTTEd to 10% because she got too high of a winrate initially). The worst part is the fact that they nerfed the duration by 2 seconds. NOw you're gonna say "HOld on YPN, it was only nerfed by 1 second, since initial damage is applied as it's triggered on-hit" and while that is true, it's even MORE of a nerf. The fact that her PErmaslow is gone, makes it a lot harder to get an aa off, since the target is running away from you. Do you even know how annoying is to trundle after your enemy frantically mashing the right mouse button in order to get an aa off which would enable you to proc E... While it was a buff to laning Sejuani (easier last hitting, yay), the ability itself feels clunky and really unsmooth to use. : Sejuani's most glorious spell...the one which defined her...and actually still does. The huge slow she could apply by ...exploding the frost that was already there?...yeah, I never understood that one either... At first it looked like this ability got somewhat of a buff. The early slow amount got increased significantly, while minimally cutting down it'S duration, which would scale up to the original amount at max rank. More early power, yay? NO! Because of the duration reduction it was less effective in an early gank. That'S just a thing...a long, less intensive slow is always more effective then a short, strong one...especially in the chases in which Sejuani would eventually be involved in. Also it got nerfed again, shortening the totla duration by 0.5 seconds, therefore making it even weaker compared to the old one. If she still had her old passive, this change would have been a good approach at balancing her out. But without the permaslow, Sejuani's supposed domain (slowing stuff) got taken away from her...then again, the knock-up on her Q kinda made up for that. : Finally, the one reason Sejuani has always been a hidden op champ. Leagues best Stunlock engage. the king of cc nukes. the- wait, they did WHAT? First off all, they did as with permafrost, tune down the stun on earlier ranks (which de facto isn't a bad nerf, since most cc abilities work this way, old Sejuani was just outdated in that way)...and then they nerfed it again, reducing the effective duration by 0.25...not too big of a nerf, but still hurts. The major change they did was change it's functionality. Before, the target hit would receive a full 2 second stun, while all other targets in the explosion radius would get half the duration. After the change, however only if the projectile actually hit a target it would apply a sutn. If it merely detonated at it'S maximum range it would slow the targets hit for 90% for the same duration ...wait...that change actually wasn't that bad. Honestly, they did quite a good job at balancing this thing. It was kinda broken to have an AoE nuke with 1175 range that would even stun you for at least 1 second if you were outside it#S maximum range, due to the detonation radius. Summary of abilities To sum up, Riot meant well when they reworked Sejuani (minor tweaks my ass, you turtles called a rework, even tho you never changed anything that would have affected his general gameplay...did I mention that i hate Trundle's new design too?). However, what Riot failed to do was build a kit that suited her role. Instead of creating the fulltank jungler she, in my opinion worked and felt best as, they made her into a weird penetration bruiser (innuendo?) with way too much focus on burst. Instead of building her kit around her W as her main AoE DPS tool, they overloaded Q with stuff that would most come into play later in the game. And the problem with most tnak junglers is their weak early. Sure, tanks are supposed to start weak but scale with fairly cheap items into lategame....but if you want a tank to jungle you ebtter give him/her the tools to survive vs all the overly aggressive stuff that comes with it...and by that I mean the creep camps alone. The change on her W (and the following nerf) basically killed her early jungle clear. Creating that sonofabitch didn't help much either...it only removed her way better sustain with (therefore pretty much forcing you onto if you want to ´have anything that resembles a decent clear time. The Solution (finally) NOw we get to the part where it gets somewhat interesting. If I was to buff Sejuani into a viable/solid state, I'd start by reworking her passive...y'know, make it an actual passive. Here are two suggestions that I already posted on Seju's page, but I want to reach as many qualified Wikians as possible with this. ' Kevin Tuggles/Boar Snack' (it's a work in progress): "Upon taking damage from large jungle monsters, enemy champions, or large minions Bristle will start building stacks of fury/hunger/aggression. At X stacks, Sejuani's next basic attack will cause Bristle to bite an enemy with the intention of ripping them open and eating their insides (deal bonus magic damage, just maybe, for clearing and 1v1 situations) and healing Sejuani for a percentage of her maximum health" (% likely scaling with level, possibly capping somewhere around 6%, for reference, heals 7%, 4%) This would basically solve a lot of issues with her early jungle as Sejuani could sustain through the jungle by constantly being healed. It would also make her a bit more threatening in a duel, which by Odin, she should be. She'S a goddamn armored sociopath with a flail riding on a giant wolfhog! Am I the only one who feels stupid for getting beaten up by a blind guy who fights with his fists only? Either way, this passive is supposed to encourage tanky fighter Sejuani, being able to take hits and retaliate. I'M not sure how i would manage the aggression stacks, as in, what counts towards a stack regarding cahmpions? (simply taking damage by anything, spell or basic attack? basic attacks only? a cooldown per champion until it applies a stack again). Otehrwise this would be borken against Dot based champion. Just imagine Sejuani fighting with a with ult and both are jsut constantly healing themselves without anything else going on. I'M thinking along the lines of and the ability to be more durable in a drawnout fight/ a large teamfight where you get hit by a lot of stuff. The possible bonus magic damage was just for extra clearing power and that it kinda feels odd to have nothing else happen if that massive hog chomps people. Frost Armor/Winter's Claw (again, I'M not good at thinking up names): Upon dealing damage to an enemy, Sejuani's frost armor will activate. Upon taking damage by a champion, a large or epic mosnter, or a large minion, her armor will release an icy explosion (X second Cooldown) that (maybe causes damage, probably not) slows the attackspeed of nearby units for 3 ''(or less) by X % and grants her a damage absorbing shield based on X (10?) percent of her maximum health for X seconds. The cooldown of Forst Armor/Winter's Claw is reduced by 1 second for everytime Sejuani one of Sejuani's abilities applies Croud control.'' This passive is, as you can see, less about dueling or sustain, but damage mitigation. It's supposed to be a good way to block early damage form minions (in more than one way) which would ultimately solve the problems she has with taking a beating from jungle mobs. Also it would make her a powerful anti-ADC tank. while sitll not being unfairly uninteractive. You have to deal damage to something to activate it and the AS speed slow will only work on champions who are standing close to you therefore you'll have to be close to the enemy Adc in order to make use of it. It'S really more aimed at giving invaders in her jungle a harder time at taking her down 1v1 buying her time to call for back up. Alternatively you could make it so her passive will only be activated by enemies who have frost applied to them, which would be a buff to her lategame, as it prevents enemies from prematurely setting it of and therefore denying the debuff on the intended targets. Finally I would also give some damage back to her W...right now it feels downright useless compared to her other spells, but whatever... Conclusion SO this is my whole rant about everything I think is wrong with Sejuani and what I would like to see changed. I know this is sort of a Rework rant that's a year too late, but it sort of took me this long to finally get all my tought about her into an organised blog (and most importantly come up with realistic alternative). All I want for Sejuani is to become the amazing fightertank that I once loved to play at and would have picked, if I'd have ever been selected for a Pro PLayer Pick (I dreamt a lot back then). Also, CHANGE HER GODDAMN SPLASHART! I CAN'T F***ING STAND IT. It's a gross misrepresentation and I hate it. So pls, my minions, discuss this, and tell me about your experiences and your opinions on my suggestions. Also, let me warn you, if I see someone going "well it's not THAT bad in this and that scenario and you gotta deal with it and blablabla"...shit is gonna get ugly. Yes, you are entitled to your own opinion, but I'M not gonna go easy o you with my response if you try to downplay stuff like as something we can't change and therefore shouldn't bother with. Peace. The f***. Out. Category:Blog posts